I launched a paid community in one month
monicalent.com
I launched a paid community in one month
1–10 of 70 posts
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#2Very impressive. I think there's no better time than today to build niche interest groups like these – and it pays.
Starting my dev career, blogging was what ultimately led to my first high-profile internship, which opened so many doors down the line. Big fan!
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#3Very impressive. I think there's no better time than today to build niche interest groups like these – and it pays. Starting my dev career, blogging was what ultimately led to my first high-profile internship, which opened so many doors down the line. Big fan!
Totally agree, it can be a game-changer if you invest in it. Thanks for reading my post :)
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#4The "launch with 100 free members" strategy worked extremely well to avoid the classic "chicken and egg" problem. It's hard to quantify, but it set the tone for the community with friendly, intelligent, and experienced people.
As a new member, that led to an amazing first-time user experience where I got high-quality answers to every question I posted.
And now I'm motivated to help out other members just as the first members helped me.
Launch revenue is great, but it won't survive unless it gets this right ^^
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#5The "launch with 100 free members" strategy worked extremely well to avoid the classic "chicken and egg" problem. It's hard to quantify, but it set the tone for the community with friendly, intelligent, and experienced people. As a new member, that led to an amazing first-time user experience where I got high-quality answers to every question I posted. And now I'm motivated to help out other members just as the first…
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Tim :) I'm really glad that you like the tone (for which I can obviously thank the members). I still have a lot to learn, but excited about what's next for sure!
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#6About 20 years ago I was coming across a website called something like filthyrichguy.com (I can't remember the exact name). This site described how rich the guy owning this site was and how you could become rich too. How? By just buying his book, of course. I was mesmerized by this site and it's audacious design for a solid hour or two. I searched around the web for more information and ended up in this circle jerk of sites promoting each other. None with any substance.
This feels similar. The blog post and the site is beautifully designed (really!) but I have a hard time figuring out what I'm buying. Is it access to a chat where everyone tries to sell you their "startups"?
I guess it's not for me, but congratz to your success!
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#7About 20 years ago I was coming across a website called something like filthyrichguy.com (I can't remember the exact name). This site described how rich the guy owning this site was and how you could become rich too. How? By just buying his book, of course. I was mesmerized by this site and it's audacious design for a solid hour or two. I searched around the web for more information and ended up in this circle jerk o…
Haha that's totally a fair feedback, I know what you mean about those people who e.g. make more money teaching you to "be an entrepreneur" than ever doing it themselves.
If you're wondering, the community is a private forum where you can get advice from experienced bloggers, feedback on your articles, and attend workshops and meetups.
No one in there is selling stuff to each other. Actually you may end up getting access to other people's stuff for free exchange for thoughtful feedback :)
Thanks for taking a look and reading, I appreciate it!
As I shared in the breakdown, what your impression is could be why most people who join have done my newsletter first.
Maybe that's something for me to think about, how to frame it for people who haven't read my newsletter or haven't been following me on Twitter for a while.
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#8About 20 years ago I was coming across a website called something like filthyrichguy.com (I can't remember the exact name). This site described how rich the guy owning this site was and how you could become rich too. How? By just buying his book, of course. I was mesmerized by this site and it's audacious design for a solid hour or two. I searched around the web for more information and ended up in this circle jerk o…
I think I can give you my perspective here, since I am part of Monica's community.
I started blogging late this summer and quickly found how hard it is to write and be read.
As an engineer I of course started researching how to increase my readership and I ended up down the infinite sewer hole of content marketing and "how to game search engines" aka SEO.
(If you want to understand why the web looks like this and why we are rather searching ddg with !searchr for answers... learning a bit of SEO will be the epiphany you need)
The amount of _crap_ you have to navigate to get some actionable information is insane.
I was lucky to stumble into Monica's Blogging for Devs free newsletter course and it was just the perfect actionable information I was looking for. No need to waste more time scavenging the web for some free answers.
The community is, in my opinion, the natural evolution. A place where I can learn effectively. So far, I've enjoyed it and I think it's worth the money.
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#9I love the idea of an aggregator of blogs written by engineers.
One thing I noticed is that if you write a blog about tech topics, you will suddenly be competing with the shallow blogs of vendors in your niche.
They have people and resources to waste in content marketing, you don't and it's a struggle to be discovered on google by other engineers.
A good aggregator that optimize for "discovery" would be awesome!
Re: I launched a paid community in one month
#10I love the idea of an aggregator of blogs written by engineers. One thing I noticed is that if you write a blog about tech topics, you will suddenly be competing with the shallow blogs of vendors in your niche. They have people and resources to waste in content marketing, you don't and it's a struggle to be discovered on google by other engineers. A good aggregator that optimize for "discovery" would be awesome!
Totally know what you mean! When I was researching the rankings, I found so many lists that are clearly made by people who are literally just googling other lists and copy/pasting them.
The results so far are pretty cool and, in my opinion, should be a signal that it is TOTALLY possible for individuals writing great technical content to stand out for a specific technology.